The Curb Game

Description

The Curb Game is a free online Shockwave(!) audio game developed by SoundSupport. You take on the role of a small hedge-hog living on a city curb, which isn't really that exciting. So, as a hedge-hog, you get your thrills from crossing the road as many times possible! Not an easy task because you may either end up as roadkill or die from boredom if you stay on your curb.And so you have to cross the road over and over again in order to raise your Excitement Score (believe me: this is what hedge-hogs do all the time!). When you arrive at the other curb you'll hear your Excitement Score increase. But while you wait to cross the road again, your Excitement Score will decrease automatically. The longer you wait, the less your Excitement Score will be. You can hear your excitement score by pressing the spacebar.You cross the road using the arrowkey-up (to move forth) and arrowkey-down (to move back). So to get to the first curb for instance, you press the arrowkey-up. When you arrive at a curb you'll hear your Excitement Score increase. Now you have to press the arrowkey-down to move towards the first curb again! Of course crossing the road wouldn't be exciting when it wasn't for the various vehicles trying to run you over! The vehicles come from the left or the right, all travelling at different speeds. When your Excitement Score increases, more and more different encounters will pass on the road.Whenever you get hit by a vehicle the game is over. You will then hear your score (when you have an installed voicesynthesizer on your system). Your score is checked with the hi-score list on this website. If your score is high enough you will be asked to type in your name, after which your score is added to the hi-score list!

What makes The Curb Game a special game is that it's one of the first (if not: the first) online hybrid audio games. The team researches the possibilities of designing a game fully based on sound (making it directly accessible for blind players) while it also features graphics (hybrid). During the game seeing players can pull the chord at the top-left of the screen by clicking on it with the mousebutton. A screen will drop down so that seeing players can try to play the game using only their ears! In this, The Curb Game is unique.The subject "crossing the road" was deliberately chosen for this game for several reasons. First, the tension of crossing the road while not being able to see the traffic is something most blind people have experienced in real life. It is this tension that SoundSupport wanted to use in a game. The second reason is that the game should present a situation to seeing people that blind people face everyday. Last but not least, The Curb Game is also an attempt to increase the very limited amount of online (Shockwave) games for blind gamers.